


Liminal

by LittleObsessions



Category: Twilight (Movies), Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Protective Carlisle Cullen, Protectiveness, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 18:21:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29139927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleObsessions/pseuds/LittleObsessions
Summary: “And it was my revenge, I see now. if I could give her something of life back, anything of life back, then King and his friends hadn’t succeeded. They had failed in their goal of ending her life, and ending it so brutally. And men like him, men like…Evanson, hadn’t won. But I cannot tell Rosalie that. Because what right did I have to make that choice, what right did I have to make her death about my own anger? And her damnation about my own revenge?”Rosalie's transformation, and her search for vengeance, told from Esme and Rosalie's point of view. A chapter story.
Relationships: Carlisle Cullen/Esme Cullen
Comments: 3
Kudos: 16





	1. Prologue: Esme

**Author's Note:**

> My loathing for S Meyer's fortification of extremely damaging gender tropes continues. That's why this story required writing. 
> 
> In Midnight Sun Edward says that Carlisle did not agree with Rosalie's choice, but he gave her advice on how to do it. But what about Esme, and all of the parallels she sees of herself in Rosalie?  
> TW: rape, domestic abuse

Liminal: Liminal: of, relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase, or condition

* * *

**Prologue :Esme**

She watched them restrain Rosalie, watched as the rage tore through her and pushed outwards in a furious roar, echoing off all of them.

And Esme understood it. She understood it acutely.

"Let her go," she ordered quietly. "Edward. Carlisle."

Her husband looked back at her, and his fingers loosened around Rosalie's upper arm. But there was doubt in his eyes and he held still, bracing against the girl lest she lunge again.

"Let her go."

Carlisle turned to her; his anguish written all over his face as he finally released Rosalie from his grip. Sympathy for his panic was fostered in her momentarily, but it was short lived as her attention was drawn back to Rosalie, whose livid agony was alight in her scarlet eyes.

Rosalie was shuddering with fury, with unsated desire. With her pulsing need for her revenge.

For her desperate need to be heard.

And that was the pain, that sadness for Rosalie, which hurt Esme most.

"She's feral," Edward snarled, beautiful teeth bared. "And she wants to do terrible things."

 _Haven't we all_ she thought, bitterly, and Edward's grip loosened from Rosalie's shoulder – his shame shooting across his face -but he stayed right beside her, prepared to assail her again if he had to.

"I would like you both to leave," she said, her tone clearly brooking no protest, as she moved towards the door to open it for them.

She knew both of them well enough to recognise their incredulity – their very masculine, very irritating, doubt – about her ability to be left alone with this powerful newborn; this feral, beautiful girl, as she turned back to look at them. She locked eyes with Carlisle for a moment, hopeful he would recognise her confidence. But he was consumed by his own rigid, unbending morality right now. She wouldn't humiliate him by disagreeing with him in front of Edward or Rosalie, but – with a sudden, powerful urge - she was determined to defend the girl against her husband and son's forceful will.

Edward moved to protest, but she turned hard eyes on him.

 _Don't you dare_ , she threatened silently, and Edward touched Carlisle's shoulder briefly in warning.

"Rosalie won't hurt me," she looked the girl in her scarlet eyes; unafraid, entirely confident in Rosalie's already startling ability for self-control. Confident in _Rosalie_. "Will you Rosalie?"

The girl sucked in a breath, more of a growl, then straightened up, "No."

"There you are," she said softly, holding Carlisle's gaze. "Please, leave us. And I mean leave."

He nodded then, forced to entrust her to Rosalie, and Esme knew it went against every one of his impulses to do it.

She would address that later, of course, but right now her focus had to be on Rosalie; not least of all because she wanted to ensure the girl would not make a mistake she would later regret.

Carlisle moved towards the door, motioning to Edward, who reluctantly followed. Both lingered, slowed, as they passed her, but she resolutely ignored them, holding Rosalie's gaze.

Esme had no particular powers; she couldn't read minds like Edward, or do all the wildly startling things that Carlislie's many acquaintances and friends could. She was relatively new to this life too, she didn't have the centuries of knowledge her husband did. Nor did she possess his rigid moral compass, which was paradoxically deeply comforting and baffling in turns.

But Esme did have experience of pain, and of horror, and of fury so rampant, so deadly, that it could consume a person.

She remembered it not only in her mind, but in her body.

And she could see it reflected in Rosalie now.

"Let me help you, Rosalie."


	2. Chapter 1: Rosalie

**Chapter 1: Rosalie**

She watched Esme move to the window seat and perch there, pushing a bundle of books to the side that Carlisle had organised in a pile earlier (which he thought Rosalie might enjoy). Then she adjusted the bottom of her cashmere sweater casually as she sat on the velvet cushion that ran the length of the large window.

Esme dressed impeccably, subtly. Rosalie had noticed this. Rosalie had noticed a lot about the other woman in her short time with the Cullens; her genuine affection, her quiet cleverness, her shyness. Her absolute devotion to the men; one she was married to, one she loved as a son.

But she had never noticed Esme's bravery.

Rosalie's body was still coursing with rage, but the absence of the two men helped calm her. And curiosity was starting to win over her immediate urge, thirst, desire; she had not expected Esme to step in, and she couldn't fathom why Esme had been so vigorous in her defence.

The late afternoon sun was still filtering through the glass, making the dust dance. It caught the side of Esme's neck quite suddenly, and it made the scars – Rosalie had never noticed them before – in the dip of her neck obvious, glistening, little half-moons of fate.

"I forget about them," Esme said, softly, fingers coming up to trace the scars.

The tone of her voice was fond, maybe even wistful.

And it made Rosalie's stomach churn.

"Why did you send them away?" She gritted out, not trusting herself to move.

Esme folded her hands in her lap, inhaled a gentle breath.

"Because they weren't helping," Esme answered. "And I could see your distress."

Rosalie wasn't sure what she had been expecting the answer to be, but she knew it hadn't been that. That answer seemed so…critical of the men whom Esme had asked to leave.

"Sometimes you just need someone who will listen. And maybe someone who will understand," Esme said softly, answering the unspoken question.

"I simply want what I am owed," Rosalie hissed, feeling her ire dissipating but knowing it would come back. In truth she was unwilling to let it go because it was the only focus she could keep that didn't feel like burning.

The three others spoke of the thirst as if it was the worst thing that Carlisle had inflicted on them. It was unbearable, yes, but worse, so much worse, was having been trapped in this life. Having been robbed of her choices - of her freedom to be liberated from the pain -, the deep humiliation which consumed her still was so much worse than the desire to drink blood.

By comparison, the thirst was a mere itch.

"And your husband condemned me to this," she continued, the words tearing out of her. "And then he refuses me my vengeance, my right to justice."

Esme didn't flinch as she listened, compassion – genuine and infuriating – on her face.

"He thinks he gets to do this to me, and to make me hurt like this, and then makes me feel shame when I want to have my rightful vengeance."

Rosalie felt her limbs loosen and trusted herself to pace towards Esme, who sat perfectly still as she approached. She was unafraid.

If Rosalie could have wept, she would have. But instead all she had was rage, and bitterness and an unquenchable desire to push her agony on to someone, anyone, else.

"He condemned me to this… _they_ condemned me to this. And now he won't let me murder them!"

Esme's eyes fluttered closed for a second, as if she were gathering strength, before she looked up at Rosalie and spoke so softly, she was almost inaudible:

"I agree."

The words acted like a blow, punching the air out of Rosalie's argument and bringing it to a grinding halt.

"What?"

Esme smiled gently, but there was something else in it; a glimmer of anger, of hardness, that Rosalie had never seen before.

"Rosalie, sit with me please."

Rosalie hesitated a moment. Since the hours before Carlisle had found her ravaged, mutilated body, she hadn't known normal touch. And after – from the moment she had awoken – she had avoided closeness to any of them, not least of all because the only one she could tolerate was Esme, but because the idea of someone touching her repulsed her.

 _Reminded_ her.

"I can't…"

Esme's face betrayed sadness for a second and then…understanding.

"For a long time I would flinch when Carlisle moved too quickly, or if Edward accidentally slammed a door," she said, as if she was talking about something as mundane as the weather. "That is why they treat me like glass. The thing, Rosalie, is that they don't realise women like you and I are forged from steel. Until we tell them. And sometimes, forgive them, they forget."

Rosalie's inhuman self-control prevented her jaw from loosening in shock, but she nodded her silent understanding.

"I feel so…" Rosalie groped for the words, incapable of articulating what she needed to say, "conflicted. So…furious, I ache with hunger and with desperation. I hate those men. I hate Royce. I hate Edward and his smugness. I hate Carlisle."

Esme grimaced and Rosalie regretted her words for the pain they caused but not for the truth of them. Esme nodded in understanding though and it occurred to Rosalie what a gracious act of selflessness that was.

What that must have cost her.

Shame, for a second, gripped Rosalie. She could rationally acknowledge Carlisle's good intentions, could see them for what they were in their purest form; a beautiful girl torn apart by savagery, dying alone in a side alley. And his son's deep loneliness and longing for love. And Carlisle's belief, naïve as it was, that all life was both precious and equal in importance.

How lovely it must have been to be so righteous. How wrong it was too.

"I want to die Esme," she said, voice weak with the very truth of it, as she slumped against the wall and slid on to the floor, giving way to the rage that was exhausting her, though she couldn't sleep. "It will stop the pain."

"I wanted to die too," Esme said after a beat, and her fingers twisted anxiously in her lap as Rosalie turned to look at her, where she was perfect and composed in the window seat, her appearance a wild juxtaposition to her words.

Rosalie's stomach suddenly churned.

"I married a man who pleased my parents, who had excellent prospects," she continued.

Rosalie recognised that story, had lived that story, up until very recently.

"But his better qualities ended there," Esme continued, and her voice was hard and dark as she spoke. "He would beat me, savagely. And force himself on me regularly. And berate me."

The words made Rosalie cringe, not from shame or disgust, but out of shared understanding. Out of deep knowledge. Her experience had involved all of that and though it had been but a matter of hours, she understood it all.

How Esme had withstood that for any period of more than even a second was horrifying to her.

"I had a brief respite during the war, when he was at The Front. When he returned, he was worse than before. And I became pregnant with his – my- child." Esme breathed in on the words, as if trying to consume them, and Rosalie couldn't bare to look at her as she spoke, knowing that no matter how the tale ended it would be tragic, because otherwise this lovely, gentle woman would not be sitting in the window seat telling it.

She would be raising her child, and be human.

"I fled. It was easy to pose as a war widow, you see. I stayed with a cousin, but my husband found me...and by that time. He beat me so savagely I thought I would die, and so I fled to Ashland. I gave birth entirely alone, save the woman from whom I boarded attending to me."

"My son was perfect. And all I had wished for, and all I had needed."

At this her face was alight with sheer love, and Rosalie could not help but be swept in it as she stole a look at her. When Esme spoke, it was with nothing but joy, and she possessed none of the bitterness Rosalie expected she should have.

None of the bitterness Rosalie felt.

"I had two days of bliss followed by a day and night of horror. He died in my arms." She paused, and the breath she didn't need left her in a rush. "After that I simply…" she shrugged, turned her palms upwards. "I tried to take my own life. And I very nearly succeeded."

Rosalie wasn't quick enough to prevent her own gasp or horror, or of deep and unrelenting understanding as to why Esme would have made that choice.

"When I first awoke, for the briefest moment, I felt the anger you feel towards Carlisle. I wondered what right he had to take that choice from me. It was different for he and–"

"How was it different?" Rosalie bit, angered now that she had been fool enough to believe Esme was on her side, and not merely trying to placate her in the face of her husband's demanding morality.

Esme held up a hand to silence her.

"We had known each other, fleetingly, years before. I already understood his goodness, and I was drawn to him even then, even as a girl. I believe, in some way, my meeting him years before had prepared me for this life. You are entirely different, you do not know Carlisle, and your anger is justified."

Rosalie was silent for a moment, watching the other woman closely.

"I am trying to point our similarities, and I suppose our differences too," Esme assured into the silence.

They were quiet for a second as Rosalie absorbed it, acknowledging their startlingly similar experiences. Both hurt by men who were supposed to love them, violated and abused, and then denied the only thing they'd craved – implicitly clear – in their denial of motherhood as the joy they both obviously knew it to be.

The denial of life.

Both changed by Carlisle because he couldn't bare to imagine their death, undoubtedly for very different reasons.

Carlisle was besotted with his wife; that much had been abundantly clear from the moment Rosalie had awoken.

But his expectations of Rosalie had felt…controlling to her. Demeaning. Demanding.

"I understand your desire, and I understand your need. I will help you fulfil it," Esme said, with baffling confidence. "But you must let me handle Edward, and convince Carlisle."

Rosalie scoffed, and Esme caught it.

She smiled wryly.

"I agree that my husband perhaps hasn't shown himself in the best light to you, but he is the best I have ever known of people. Sometimes his compassion overrides everything else, _even_ his ability to make the right choices. However, when he understands, he will accept it; even if he doesn't agree."

Rosalie had her reservations about that, but then she had assumed Carlisle had the final word on everything. Perhaps she had been wrong about that.

"Can you be patient while I speak with him?"

Rosalie noticed Edward did not figure in the conversation, and it pleased her in a way she didn't really understand.

Rosalie nodded but stayed exactly where she was, too afraid to believe there was anyone who would ally themselves with her.

"You can always leave Rosalie, you are not our prisoner," Esme said, though her voice was quiet and perhaps a little sad.

Rosalie didn't like Edward. She hated Carlisle. She was slowly growing to like Esme.

Though it was hardly a challenge.

But the overriding truth was she couldn't imagine being alone forever. That was the true, absolute fear at the core of all of this. Condemned to eternity alone, frighteningly beautiful, never changing. Stuck in time. Afraid of everything and anything that approached her.

She could not voice this, could not possibly admit that fragility to the perfectly composed woman in the window seat.

Esme stood and moved towards her, crouching down slowly, unthreateningly, in front of Rosalie.

She reached her hand out so slowly, with great care and calculation, that Rosalie could see her intention as Esme gently pressed a hand to her cheek. Esme's hand was small and soft, but so careful and tender that Rosalie felt the unbearable need to cry.

"Why do you want to help me? Why are you doing this?" She sobbed, realising her body was shaking.

"Because I care for you, and I would like to care for you for as long as we find ourselves in this life."

She left the weight of her face rest against Esme's soft touch for a moment, her eyes closing for a fraction of a second in which she felt safe.

No one had ever spoken to her with such affection before.


	3. Chapter two: Esme

**Esme**

She knew she would find her husband in the hospital in Rochester, after she was assured that Rosalie was calm enough to leave alone. He had already handed his notice in and he was working out his final shifts. It took him an hour to run to the hospital from Ithaca daily and, at any rate, it wasn’t sustainable in the long term for him to remain on the staff. They would have to go further than the rural house they’d purchased outside of Ithaca if Rosalie hoped to live anything resembling a normal life once she had learned to control her blood-lust.

Esme knew Carlisle would be sad to leave this job behind, but she was also certain he no doubt viewed it as a penance of sorts for his turning of Rosalie.

Rosalie’s contempt had proven worse penance, however, than having to leave this role.

And Esme could see it eating at him. Could see it and could do nothing about it because there was nothing to be done. Because, no matter how many times she whispered it into his skin, he would always blame himself.

And it pained her to see it.

That afternoon, however, when he had firmly asserted his disagreement in the face of Rosalie’s plan to have her retribution on Royce and his friends, Esme had felt that rare emotion towards him: anger.

The recompense, she had silently agreed with Rosalie, was one those men deserved meted out to them.

In abundance. Slow, agonising abundance.

But Carlisle was so preoccupied with preserving what he seen as their last shreds of humanity in this life that he was loathed to acknowledge Rosalie’s right to restitution for fear it might go against her in the balance of her judgement, tip her into the damnation Carlisle had confided in Esme, alone, that he was sure they were condemned to.

Even if it meant denying Rosalie her own autonomy, her own right to construct a destiny – as limited as it was.

Perhaps, she thought, as she sat in the seat in front of her husband’s desk and waited patiently, it was Carlisle’s rampant hypocrisy that was so galling to Esme right now, that had made her feel so furious towards him that afternoon. Though he had been vocally opposed to Edward’s decision to leave them in 1927, probably knowing some of what Edward intended to do, he had let him go in the belief that Edward had a right to make that choice.

He had never once restrained him from the fact. He hadn’t wrapped his fingers around Edward’s bicep and restrained him.

And when he had come back two years later, he had forgiven Edward his indiscretions.

As had she. She had been overjoyed and full of love to see her son and had pushed her horror – her anger at his perfidy- to the side.

The hospital made her deeply uncomfortable, and she avoided coming here at all costs. It made her larynx burn, set her teeth on edge, and conjured a mixture of potent feelings, amongst which repulsion and desire warred for dominance.

She was not weak in the face of her thirst. She was adept in ignoring it, accustomed to its gnawing presence, but she did not enjoy pressing the issue. She had no conscious desire to kill a human, but nor had she any desire to spend hours upon hours in close proximity to them.

She heard his footsteps in the hall, recognisable from a substantial distance, acutely attuned to him as he greeted a nurse and signed a chart in passing.

From the pace of his footsteps, quick and keen, she assumed he had deduced she was here already. They were accustomed to that now, connected in a way that was cosmically constructed. And that wasn’t a romantic notion, or naïve.

“Esme…” he spoke and his voice betrayed his surprise that she was here. “I didn’t expect to see you until I was home.”

She turned to him, smiled gently, and stood. She had to swallow against the magnetic, dangerous smell that lingered on his lab coat, on his lovely skin.

As if reading her mind he shirked it off and, turning to the door, hung it on the hook there. Then he moved to the sink and pushed his elbow until the water ran hot with steam. 

“I didn’t think this should wait,” she said simply, watching the practised dance of his hands as he scrubbed them in stages. “At any rate, I don’t want to have this conversation at home. I don’t think it would be fair on Rosalie, or on Edward.”

He sluiced the suds from his hands as he looked at her, his face cautious with emotions he probably wanted to hide, but knew he shouldn’t.

And she loved him for it.

“I can’t bear it when we disagree,” he said softly, his eyes pleading with all the things he could not say to her, not here, certainly not here.

“Nor can I, but there are times when we will.”

He nodded and dried off his hands, then took a seat on the small couch just under the window.

“You were angry with me this morning. I could tell.”

“Could you?” She asked, genuinely curious.

“You’ve never asked me to leave before, ever,” he said, half-joking, the other half searching for reassurance.

“That wasn’t for me,” she said, reaching out to touch his knee. “That was for Rosalie’s benefit.”

He was nothing if not an opportunist when it came to her, and his hand darted out to secure hers on his knee. She squeezed his fingers reassuringly, as grateful of the contact as she suspected he might be.

“I certainly misjudged that,” he admitted, his brows knitting in distress.

“I won’t disagree with you there,” she said softly.

He bristled a little, and she knew he could no more cope with her teasing in happier circumstances than he could manage her chastisement in serious ones. He was so deeply sensitive to criticism, so afraid that he would wrong anyone he loved.

Above all, Carlisle was terrified that she might suddenly perceive him as unworthy of love, of commitment. Of her.

“I worry that she will-“

Esme held up her other hand, silencing him, and he took the gesture for what it was. A plea for him to listen, as opposed to talk. As opposed to sermonise.

“I have told you everything, I think,” she said softly. “Or at least I used to think that. But there are secrets I keep. Things I’ve never told you. Because you might see me differently.”

“I could never-“

She looked at him pointedly and he closed his mouth. Even though she knew his words to be genuine, though she knew him to mean exactly what he said – he could _never_ not love her – it was important for her to speak.

It was even more important for him to understand.

“I believe that, but that isn’t the point. The point is that I have never told you because…because it was rendered futile. And because I have been afraid of it.”

She could see, from his bewilderment, that he was utterly confused about where this was going, but he was patient enough – perhaps curious – and certainly committed enough, to wait it out.

And she loved him for it, despite her anger.

“You never once asked me if I wanted vengeance, if I wanted to kill Charles.”

His eyes closed at the mention of the name he could not bear to utter, couldn’t bear to hear. His face was a mask of indifference when his eyes reopened, but she knew that behind that carefully constructed façade he would be working relentlessly to control every mad, feral urge that he so loathed.

Every part of him that he wished didn’t exist.

He moaned, just a little, at the back of his lovely throat. Perhaps it was because of the mention of her former husband, but she was not disinclined to believe it might well be because the idea he had of her and the idea of her committing murder were incongruent for him, unimaginable for him.

Horrifying for him.

“Ask me Carlisle.”

He stared into her eyes with his suddenly black ones, eyes aching with the desire for her to stop this conversation before she gifted him with horrible knowledge, knowledge he could no longer pretend he didn’t already have.

“Esme…” his voice was soft and pleading and pregnant with understanding, heavy with fear.

“Carlisle, please.”

She squeezed his hand.

“Would you have murdered Charles?”

“Unequivocally,” she said, without missing a beat.

He did not draw his eyes away as she had anticipated, but he did not speak either.

“There were times I was tempted. But then there was always you; you to make me feel safe, you to make me feel loved. You to love. You with your deeply, unfathomably strong morals,” she said.

She watched him cringe, watched him squirm under her wholesome and unflattering praise. Praise, she knew, he perceived as criticism. Praise, she supposed, that could be interpreted as criticism.

In the context of Rosalie, his unfathomably strong morals would deny her closure.

He hated having his character picked apart, and she hated doing it. But it was true too; he had been the reason she had chosen never to go far enough back to have her vengeance on Charles.

“You led me away from that, you made me recognise the value of moving on. Of leaving life – however low it may be - as preserved as possible. But it doesn’t mean I didn’t fantasise about it, it doesn’t mean I didn’t long for it.”

He nodded, and she could see now he understood where this was going.

“At the very beginning I did think about it; when I was alone, I even planned it.”

She turned her face away, unable to witness the scrutiny – the deeply buried horror - she knew he would be feeling.

He brought his hand up to her cheek though, propelling her to look at him. To really look at him. And she was surprised by the openness there, by the desire he had to understand. And by the love he held too, and that had never once left the soft curve of his mouth or the depth of his lovely eyes.

“Then Edward took the chance from me.”

He swallowed his acknowledgement, nodded his understanding.

“You never chastised Edward for that. Because he did something we had all, at one point, wanted to do,” she said calmly, setting her palms over his on her face. “Maybe even something _you_ had wanted to do.”

He was still in the face of the accusation, accepting of the shared truth that neither of them had ever willingly acknowledged. A truth they could not have admitted until they were forced to in this moment.

Slowly, as if it caused him great pain, he nodded once.

“And Rosalie, Rosalie has nothing in this life but her desire for vengeance. No Carlisle to love her, no Edward to need her,” she continued softly.

Suddenly his face contorted into agony, and she seen then all the conflict that had kept him at a distance from her these last few weeks. That had kept him at the hospital while she fielded a new-born and a furious Edward. While he pretended he did not despise what he had done.

“Esme what have I done?”

He fell forward, his head landing against her chest as he clutched the edges of her jacket, his hands clutching her in powerful desperation.

“God forgive me, what have I done?”

She knew well enough this was not just about Rosalie. This was about every time his hand had been forced by his compassion; initially to stop the consuming darkness of loneliness, then to save Esme herself from a terrible fate, then to turn Rosalie because he couldn’t bare to imagine her death. 

And she knew why Rosalie’s death was so repugnant to him. Why all logic had fled him as he got to his knees and sealed her fate.

“Carlisle,” she put her fingers under his chin, lifted his eyes to hers. She softened her voice, tried to pour every ounce of love she carried within her body for him into her words.

There was little point in punishing him for his hypocrisy, when he was already punishing himself.

“Carlisle I love you. I have loved you since the moment you set foot in my parents’ parlour. Even then I could feel your goodness, feel your aching need to be loved.

“But Rosalie doesn’t know that. Though she soon will, she soon will if she sees that you care about her justice, that you recognise her desire for vengeance. And that you aren’t repulsed by her desire for it.”

He flinched, saddened by the implication, knowing that his condemnation of Rosalie was, by association, a condemnation of her. A condemnation of what Esme would have chosen, had she been given the choice.

But he would never say that and, more to the point, she would never have made him say something like that.

He took her hands within his, entwining their fingers, lacing them tightly as he looked at her softly.

“You thought I would be appalled by you?”

She dipped her head for a moment.

“Esme…” he whispered, and there was conviction in his voice, “I would never be appalled by that. I…understand it. I understand it completely.”

She looked at his face and the sincerity of his words were clear as he spoke.

“So you understand Rose.”

It was not a question; it was a statement.

He said nothing, and she knew his reservations remained. For a second she felt frustrated, irritated by his commitment to such a blatant double standard.

As if he could see it, he patted her knee softly and then got to his feet, unbuttoning his waistcoat as he stood beside the small window. The office was on the third floor, and it overlooked the drizzly night that had availed itself on Rochester. She did not need to follow his eyes to know he would likely be able to see the alley in which he found Rosalie – blood slicked cobbles, pungent with blood, lovely white wool livid with blood – to know he was looking at it.

“Do you know why I turned Rosalie?”

He did not use the word saved, and he never would.

Esme had an inkling as to the answer. She knew him well enough to have taken an educated guess.

“I think-“

“She reminded me of you and of what you suffered.”

She hadn’t anticipated he’d get to the point so swiftly, but here he was.

She watched him as he spoke, as his fingers ghosted out to the touch cold glass in front of him.

“And it was my revenge, I see now. if I could give her something of life back, anything of life back, then King and his friends hadn’t succeeded. They had failed in their goal of ending her life, and ending it so brutally. And men like him, men like…Evanson, hadn’t won. But I cannot tell Rosalie that. Because what right did I have to make that choice, what right did I have to make her death about my own anger? And her damnation about my own revenge?” 

She was silent for a second, then she spoke.

“None, darling,” she whispered softly, as if either of them needed confirmation of that.

He nodded, his hand splaying out against the glass as he leaned forward, his shoulders curling in shame.

“Bitterness does things to people Esme,” he said after a moment, looking up at her. “It eats away at them. You are not bitter. Rosalie is quite different.”

“We are different because I woke up to someone I knew, someone who had been kind to me. And I made my final choice, Carlise, to end my life. Charles-“

He winced at the name, and it always struck her how visceral his response was to that name. _To that idea._

She was determined to make him understand. It felt necessary that she did it, not just for Rosalie but for herself. And for everything she knew she and the girl lost in their human lives.

“Charles never made my final choice for me.” She swallowed, scrambled to find the words. “Royce King held Rosalie as his friends raped her and helped as they beat her to death.”

His entire body hardened, tensed, and she seen horror pulse through him then, revulsion, hatred.

None of these things suited Carlisle, and yet he did feel them. But on him they seemed magnified, more horrific for there existence when he felt and showed her them. Despite what Edward or Rosalie might think – determined to believe him a better specimen of their kind; elevated, celestial, and sometimes with resentment of his strong convictions – she knew Carlisle.

She had been in the very depths of his soul. Scarred. Frightened. Shaped from abandonment and loneliness and the aching, visceral desire to be loved.

“You can forgive her bitterness,” she whispered. “You’ve felt it, after all. That is why you decided to save Rosalie.”

He winced at her words.

“I can forgive her bitterness,” he said after a moment, “but I couldn’t forgive myself if it ruined her, lingered in her forever.”

She stood and moved towards him; towards the black window with the rain that battered down it in sheets. She put her hands around his waist, sliding them up to splay out on his chest as she pressed her face to his back.

Here there was safety, and no bitterness. Here there was the choice to look forward, and live an extraordinary life with the man she loved.

Rosalie had none of that.

“That isn’t your choice to make Carlisle,” she said. “Don’t try to make her choices for her.”

He wrapped his fingers round one of her hands and held them there against his still chest.

“Speak with her, please.”

He squeezed her fingers in affirmation, and that was enough.


	4. Chapter 3: Rosalie

**Rosalie**

Rosalie wanted to hate him. It made much more sense for her to loathe him than for her to admire him, for her to _like_ him.

But it was harder in practice than it was in principle.

He was so kind. And so…open. And so gentle in both manner and presence. And so desperate for her to be happy.

They were wandering side by side, a human pace that made Rosalie itch with anticipation, as they ran through the dense forest.

This morning he had suggested they hunt together. There was a deferential tone to his voice as he’d asked, an invitation as opposed to a directive. And she was surprised and curious in equal turns. It seemed, as a rule, Carlisle hunted alone. Only a few times he had gone with Esme, and rarely with Edward. His eyes were always golden, but Rosalie had never been able to work out how he maintained it with so few hunts. And thus, she had deduced, he must do it on his way home – maybe in the early morning sunlight – alone.

A ritual that had to be carried out, she was sure, but not to be enjoyed.

Carlisle had stood at the door to the room the Cullens had given over to her furious vigil – a southern facing room, with a four poster she would never sleep in - awaiting her answer patiently. She wanted to rage at him for the way he had restrained her the day previously, to hate him so venomously that she could ignore the fact he already cared about her.

No one had ever really cared about her, when she looked below the surface.

She hated that about Carlisle.

More to the point, it irritated her that she so wanted to aspire to his level of control, his level of calm. It infuriated her that she could not yet do that.

But she had reluctantly accepted his invitation out of the hope she could find the courage to tell him that.

They had found an unsuspecting herd of deer and he had stood back as she had taken the largest down. Rosalie had been bred a lady, and she never played with her food.

Similarly to how Edward had grudgingly shown her – at Esme’s insistent behest – on their first hunt, she snapped the neck cleanly, felling the beast in one slick move before laying it down on the ground and swiftly drinking.

It was only when she was finished, using the edge of her dark blouse to pad at the little bubble of blood at the side of her mouth, she realised Carlisle had done the same and was sitting on a rock, a lifeless and drained buck at his feet.

She watched him for a moment as he sat on the outcropping, staring out into the maze of trees in front of them. The green was so lush and verdant, so intense, that Rosalie – a stomach sloshing with blood – felt something which resembled peace for a second.

“I want to apologise to you.”

She was still trying to remember that the others possessed the same subtle gifts as her; the ability to know when they were being observed amongst them.

Carlisle looked so human, acted so human, that it was easy to forget he was just the same as her.

Only better, less cruel.

He looked at her as she uncurled from her crouch, adjusting the blouse, and pushed a stay curl back from her face.

“I don’t share much about myself Rosalie. I was born to a father who was cruel, and cold, and ruthless,” he said, not moving. “I don’t remember much, but I recall that. I recall the desperate, aching need I felt for him to love me. I recall the horror I felt as I watched him torture helpless women – as witches – and Roman Catholics, for their beliefs. I also recall the agony I felt as I myself did it, condemning them to the same terrible fate.

And whatever pain we had then? That pain follows us into this life. I know that as a certainty.”

He looked at her and his eyes were golden and sore. She knew he could understand, if not feel, the humiliation and agony tearing at her like she was made of fine silk. Shredded.

That he held his own pain, that he had brought anything from his former life into this one, had never occurred to her.

She’d been so buys wrapped in her own endless purgatory.

“I should apologise to you for thinking I could tell you how you should feel. I could understand why you might hate me Rosal-“

“I don’t hate you, not really,” she found herself saying, and meaning it, despite herself. “I know why you think that. And sometimes I do hate you. But I know why you did it. I know it was goodness in you, compassion. But I am not exactly familiar with those. I don’t remember them so it’s hard to recognise them.”

They were silent as they contemplated her words.

“Nor did I. I had to learn them too,” he said eventually.

There was sadness on his very beautiful face. She did not find him attractive, though she could appreciate his beauty in an objective way.

Perhaps it was because he was very much the father-figure in the house she lived in with a family she did not belong to. Perhaps it was because she was so attracted by her own beauty that no one’s could be paralleled.

Perhaps, she thought tentatively, she was already perceiving him as someone to whom she would turn for advice.

“Rosalie, I don’t want you to seek vengeance. I think it’s something which could cause you more harm than good-“

Rage filled her immediately. She had started to believe that he was going to, if not support her, at least accept it. At least give her some means of satisfying the burning need she had to seek out her restitution.

To heal herself.

He held up a hand, sensing the sudden tension radiating from her. She hissed and drew back.

“But I also must acknowledge that my views are my own, and they don’t have to apply to you if you don’t want them to. Or if you do not think they fit. I could not give you my blessing – I can’t stretch to that - but I will accept your choices. I will not judge you for them. And I will not stop you.”

Her body uncoiled from its anger almost instantly and she breathed again, unnecessary but paradoxically vital to calm herself.

“You’re serious?”

He nodded.

“I don’t rule my family, Rosalie. I don’t ever want to be a tyrant. And more important than all of those reasons? I don’t want to drive you away.”

The word ‘family’ rung in her head, made her feel sideswiped with the potency of it. The breeziness of it struck her too, the way he said it as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

But she didn’t have time to ruminate on it. And he didn’t give her space to refute it either.

“You will have to act quickly. We have two weeks left before we have to leave this part of the country.”

This was his way of giving her permission, of giving his consent if not his blessing.

They were silent as she tried to find the courage to speak, tried to find the words that could ask for his help without needing to say ‘please’.

He was the only one who could tell her how, she knew. But asking would cost her something.

“I don’t want to drink their blood,” her words were barely a whisper. “I don’t want them inside of me.”

He closed his eyes as she spoke, drew in a deep breath. At first she was ashamed because she thought he was embarrassed at the implication, and the grotesque weight of the words. But she seen almost instantly that it was sadness, disgust, consideration that made him wince like that.

Perhaps it was even love for her.

He smiled at her, gently, kindly, and nodded his understanding.

“I can assist you,” he stood up then and motioned in the direction of home. “You’ve already shown a level of control which is impressive, far advanced of a typical new-born. It will be hard, but not impossible.”

“I will manage it then,” she said, determination hardening her voice.

He reached out to clasp her shoulder, but withdrew his hand, and while she was relieved he second-guessed himself, she was shocked to find herself momentarily leaning into the affection before checking that urge.

“Anyway,” he said softly, a lilt of humour in his voice, “you’ll be keen to outdo Edward.”

She smiled despite herself, and the smallest laugh bubbled up from her throat.

She had not heard herself laugh in this life. It was a startling sound.


End file.
